Effective/‘of the moment,’ this Ukrainian war film, from first-time director Stanislav Tiunov, flips the script of those WWII stories where a Good Samaritan, at first reluctantly, works a ruse to rescue hundreds of predominately Jewish hostages from virtual Nazi imprisonment on the other side of some border. Here, our reluctant hero is a Lithuanian Jew, just out of Russia-Friendly Kazakhstan, but still carrying his Kazakhstan passport, a document that lets him pass thru new Russian checkpoints in a war just begun. A sort of get-out-of-jail-free card that gives Kostia (Cezary Lukaszewicz) access to trapped families needing a way out of Bucha. With goods for bribes planted in the car trunk instead of ammo or hidden fugitives, he has tins of beef & Coca-Cola to grease the wheels to freedom. Not that Kostia is thrilled being in harm’s way, but he owes it to the organization that helped him get out. So, willing to run the gauntlet for a family of five; a girl needing medical attention; a nationally famous composer. But a personal close call after being eyewitness to what’s going on leads to his own Damascus Moment, turning him into a kind of Freedom Fighter, even if only a Freedom Fighter with a Kazakhstan passport and a Tesla. These scenes interspersed with the expected ‘horrors of war’ from various Russian units (they seem divided by ethnicity) each vying for top honors in murder and atrocities. (Spoiler: Chechens win.) Unfortunately, it’s at this moment when the film loses specificity and starts to play like a late-‘50s/early-‘60s film about WWII's 'Greatest Generation.'* Still, often moving and suspenseful. Plus a real find in a great kid who plays Kostia’s assistant, Dima (Nikon Fedotov), indeed Tiunov handles all the actors with a natural touch. Then at the end, titles letting us know the fate of many of the actual people whose stories we’ve been following.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Not a match in most ways, but the WWII movie this brought to mind is THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR/'62. In its different way, quite an excellent film, https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/counterfeit-traitor-1962.html
1 comment:
A truly compelling, suspenseful piece of filmmaking and it's apparently a pretty accurate portrayal of one man's genuinely heroic efforts to help others in desperate straits in Ukraine. I wish more people were aware of it, though it was barely distributed in the US. Fortunately, not hard to find online with English subtitles. Thanks for covering it here, MAK!
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